The present invention is directed to a system for use with an internal combustion engine and, more particularly, to a system for use with an internal combustion engine that is effective for increasing power and improving the fuel usage of the engine.
Standard internal combustion engines rely upon a pressure differential to move the fuel/air mixture into the combustion chamber associated with each cylinder. During the intake stroke of the piston of a conventional engine, the piston recedes in the cylinder bore and the inlet valve is simultaneously opened at the inlet port to admit the fuel/air mixture. The receding piston creates a partial vacuum in the combustion chamber and throughout the intake manifold. This vacuum draws air through the carburetor where, in the typical jet-type carburetor or fuel injector systems, liquid fuel droplets are sprayed into the intake air to create a misty fuel/air mixture.
The nature and quality of the combustion of the fuel/air mixture in the combustion chamber depends upon numerous factors. One of the most significant of these factors is the degree to which the fuel droplets released by the carburetor or fuel injectors are atomized and vaporized on their way to or within the combustion chamber. Ideally, the fuel/air mixture in the combustion chamber should be in a gaseous state. However this is not typically achievable in conventional internal combustor engines. Fuel in a liquid state, suspended in the combustion chamber as a mist or droplets, will often not ignite. Such unvaporized fuel that does not burn completely during the combustion stroke of the cylinders is expelled into the exhaust system where it either continues to burn, heating the engine and requiring surplus pollution control devices or is vaporized and exhausted out into the atmosphere.
Water injection, has been known and used for many years to increase the power output of the engine without the need of additional fuel, as well as for use in increasing gas mileage, reducing engine knocking, reducing engine operating temperature, reducing carbon deposits in the engine, and for reducing detrimental emissions such as nitrous oxide emissions (N2O), commonly referred to as NOX. Prior art water injection systems have included both complex and expensive systems and relatively simple and inexpensive systems. Unfortunately, all such systems have required the use of relatively large reservoirs for containing and providing supply water for injection into the fuel intake of the engine. This requires that vehicle manufacturers must provide a substantial amount of space in already space limited areas of most passenger vehicles as well as significantly increasing the weight of the vehicle. Further, the user must refill the reservoirs with water after a relatively short period of use. With more stringent and demanding state and federal fuel mileage regulations, automobile and truck manufacturers have been under pressure to develop vehicles having significant increases in fuel mileage performance often resulting in more demanding limitations on space and weight considerations.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to have a system that for use with an internal combustion engine that increases the efficiency of the engine, reduces pollutants, reduces the amount of unburnt fuel from being expelled into the atmosphere, increases the power and reduced fuel consumption of the engine while minimizing the amount of space and weight increases.